Kakistocrat

I could not find Maria Campbell’s "Jacob" on the Internet anywhere, which truly suprised me, so I took the time (approximately 30 minutes) to transfer it from the "New Anthology of Canadian Literature in English," to Poemhunter.

Anyways, ‘Jacob’ can now be read by clicking on this: "Jacob"

‘Jacob’ centers own the lost identity of an abused people (the Native Americans) and on the interfernce of outside forces (the Church, ‘white people’) who bear responsibility for this lost identity and the problems that come as a consequence.

In the case of the speaker’s grandparents, one has remained constant and has resisted outside interference (and because of this the story of ‘Jacob’ can be told, for it is the telling or the verbal recounting of past events that creates one very visible differece between the Native population and the written records of those who interere with them) while the other has submitted to outsiders and now, instead of being able to tell past stories, can only tell his own story, and barely that, for all he can tell is of own new self, with his newly given name (Jim Boy). Jim Boy, formerly Kannap, has been recreated in the image of the whiteman (that certainly seems to be an affront to the Creator of all, wouldn’t it?) and himself cannot ‘tell’ the story of Jacob in the manner that he once could have (by song or dance for example).

Jim Boy has become Jim Boy when the whiteman renames him. The whiteman controls his identity, and upon his conversion to Christianity, he is no longer referred to by his birth name (Kannap). The speakers Grandmother however remains unfazed, but Grandfather Jim Boy/Kannap has lost his identity.

History and memory are very important to the identity of the speaker. The history we are given in the form of Jacob’s story is indeed a sad one. He is taken away to a residential school when he is a small boy and he is made to stay there for 12 years not being able to see his parents because there are no roads in those days, and his parents do not have a horse.

When he returns to where he once lived, his parents are dead, and nobody knows who he is because he has been given a new name, and because he has been recreated in the image of an outsider. Jacob can no longer speak the language he once knew, nor does he remember how to live in the bush. He survives because people are kind to him and help him when they can. A few summers after leaving school, Jacob marries.

He and his wife have a good life. Jacob begins to relearn his lost heritage. He and his wife raise two orphan girls as their own, and many people come to Jacob for advice. He and his wife are held in high esteem by those around them.

The Priests come to take the children away to the residential schools, but Jacob resists. The priest has a book that has all the names of the children and who they belong to and when he sees that Jacob himself went to a residential school he wonders why Jacob is resisting.

‘Jacob,’ he says. ‘You know better. You went to dah school an you know dah edjication hees important.’

‘Yes I go to dah school an dats why I don wan my kids to go. All dere is in dat place is suffering.’

Jacob and the Priest begin to talk about Jesus. The Priest invokes his name, but Jacob states that even "dah Jesus he never lose his langauge an hees peoples…Dah Jesus he knowed his Mommy and Daddy, an he always knowed who his people dey are.’

The Priest explains that if all Jacob is wondering is who his parents are, he would be happy to tell him. The Priest opens the book that contains information about the Native people (which should have been in their own memories, rather than in the pirests power to dispense), and tells him what his fathers name was. When Jacob’s wife hears who Jacob’s father is, she ’start to cry real hard,’ and because Jacob’s father is her father as well (something they both never knew), she goes into the forrest and kills herself.

The old women stay with Jacob a long time, and sing to him healing songs, but Jacob is ‘just dead inside.’ His hurts and pains affect the lives of his children, but one day Jacob’s daughter marries and has a child, and as Jacob holds his grandchild, Jacob finds healing.

When he is an old man, Jacob dies. In his final years he had  fought for his people against the government and demanded that schools be build for his people where they live so that they do not have to ever be taken away again. He claims that ‘the good God he wouldn of make babies come from Mommies and Daddies if he didn want dem to stay home an learn dere language an dere Indian ways.’

Jacob’s story is a sad one, and though sadness cripples him for some time, he does regain movement. Maria Campbell has given her readers a beatiful testament to the human spirt and its ability to overcome adversity. Her Jacob is able to find meaning in devoting the rest of his life to others, and one of the first things he begins by doing is writing down the old names of everyone and the new names of their kids, so that generational memory will never be forgotten. While this method of writing is different from the ‘telling’ as the speakers Grandmother would have done, I believe that the point Campbell is trying to make is that damage done is irreversible, and though we may wish to make things better, we can never go back to the way things were. But we can move forward.

K.

A decade after writing ‘Not Waving But Drowning,’ poet Stevie Smith claimed that her inspiration for it was an occurrence in which a man, believed to be waving to his friends on the shore, drowned.

Despite Stevie’s likely misremembering of the event, she has a deeper goal than simply poeticizing of the news. A psychological complexity is unmasked that allows for a certain Jessica’s simple (but correct) interpretation. She writes that the poem is about "the unanswered plea of an unknown individual who has not been killed physically, but mentally, emotionally…"

The moaning ‘dead’ man who is not heard by those around him should tip the reader to the central character’s feelings of isolation and loneliness. His first words to us (’I was much further out than you thought’) can certainly be read in light of the very literal dead-man drowning framework that Stevie claimed the poem was based on, but at its deeper level, the poem speaks of a man whose sadness, and pain and hurt have had a more powerful effect on his life than those around him realize. What they saw as ‘larking’ (joking) was actually his desperate attempts for attention to be brought to his plight. Even after his ‘death’ they still do not realize their missed opportunities, and they misdiagnose what put him beyond their help.

His heart has given way, as they suggest, but for different reasons. There is a certain emptiness or void brought on that was never filled by those around him who did not recognize his hurts, and now the void cannot be filled.

Though Stevie misremembers the previously referenced news story, her thoughts give the poem a certain perspective that lends to a proper reading. Explaining ‘Not Waving But Drowning,’ Stevie writes:

I thought that in a way it is true of life too [for many people] do not feel at all at home in the world [so some] joke a lot and laugh and people think they are quite allright and jolly nice too, but sometimes the brave pretense breaks down, and then, like the poor man in this poem, they are lost.

K.